Want to improve how you market your business online? Since it’s 2013, I’ll let you in on a little secret.

If it’s not working, change it.

While perseverance is admirable and often rewarded, blind persistence can lead you down a rabbit hole you’ll never get out.

You only have 24 hours a day, less the time you choose to sleep, eat and spend with your loved ones. So choose wisely. If you’re not enjoying how you market your business online or your general experience online, instead of forcing it, adapt. Ask yourself – what don’t I like about it?

Humans are social by nature

When I meet business owners who tell me they don’t like social media or they don’t want to use it, what they’re really saying is that they haven’t found a way to share the stories they love to share in person, but online.

Maybe you’re more visual, and Pinterest would be perfect, but that expensive consultant said that if you didn’t tweet 7 times a day you wouldn’t make it. Maybe you love to write blogs, but a friend suggested you spend your time finding and sharing “good content” to increase the reach of your Facebook page. And really, who reads blogs anyways. Maybe…

[Read more…]

Would you blog if it were more fun?

We thought so too!

The blogging experience for small business owners is broken. It’s not fun or easy to share their story online. Which is sad, because almost every small business owner we meet has a remarkable story to tell.

We want small businesses to love sharing their story online as much as they do in person, so we created a fun Drag & Drop editor in Spokal. It allows you to easily create stories in a short period of time. You can add big and beautiful photographs right from the editor and see what people are saying on the web about a topic and drag that into your post.

What do you think?

This is only the beginning. We’ll be adding drag and drop YouTube, the ability to modify the messages that you post to Facebook and Twitter, and more!

Let us know what you’d like to see.

What’s the most effective advertising for small businesses?

Well, that depends on the small business. We focus a lot on business owners or people who have several employees, so that’s who we’re going to chat about.

most effective advertising for small businesses

Honestly, it’s nothing new. The most effective advertising for small businesses is simply doing a fantastic job.

Really?

Yes.

What do you do? What do you do really well? What do you do really well that makes people come home after buying your product or receiving your service that makes them tell their friend/spouse/insert someone important here?

[Read more…]

You may have heard this word a few times now, and you’re probably wondering, what is “inbound marketing” really like? I’ve heard people describe it several ways, including “It’s like doing a bunch of stuff online” or “It’s how you get customers using the Internet.” While they’re true, that’s like me saying “Planes take you to 30,000 feet” or “Running outside helps you bump into your neighbours.”

So what? They don’t give you the full picture, and can be difficult to relate to. That’s why we’ve broken it down and compared it to something more familiar: learning to play the piano.

Inbound Marketing Explained: It’s Like Learning The Piano

Yes, it really is.

[Read more…]

Google Analytics

If you haven’t started thinking about analytics yet, check out our intro to online analytics for small businesses. Once you understand what analytics are and why you need them, we can get started on how to use them for your business. 

More Isn’t Merrier

The beauty of online marketing is that you can measure almost anything. However, just because you can measure everything doesn’t mean you should. Interpreting the results from your analytics is time consuming, and time is your most important resource!

There are lots of tools available to measure analytics for small businesses – for your website or blog we recommend using Google Analytics, which is free. To help you get started, we’ve put together a quick overview of 2 analytics to measure for each part of your inbound marketing campaign. This isn’t a complete list, however it’s a great overview to get you started. [Read more…]

Small business is growing in Canada. As a company that helps small businesses grow and realize their dreams, there’s nothing more exciting for us than seeing growth in the small business sector across the country. That’s why this article on the growing Canadian entrepreneur community from Biv.com makes everyone at Spokal look forward to what’s coming our way.

The article cites a recent report from CIBC that claims a huge boom is coming for small businesses in Canada. Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist at CIBC, says that over the next decade we may see the strongest activity in the startup community in Canadian history! [Read more…]